How to explain SEO ranking to impatient client

[Jasnick]

I have a client (local community group) wanting to know why they aren't on the first page in Google after the site has been up a week!
Their previous site (which was up for several years) was listed first even though that was one of those free sites with no domain name of their own, like http://site.tripod.com, so they are expecting this new site to rank the same.

The only item from the site so far that appears in search engines is a PDF doc. Does anyone know why this is the first item to be indexed?

Also, the domain name is just the inital letters of the group which probably doesn't help - example: http://abcde.org.

I have submitted a sitemap. I have tried to explain that all their old links to the site will need to be updated, which they understand but it doesn't stop them asking!

Does anyone have a standard response to this sort of question?

Thanks.